Generations of readers have delighted in the work of the great American humorist Don Marquis, who was frequently compared to Mark Twain. These free-verse poems, which first appeared in Marquis's New York newspaper columns, revolve around the escapades of Archy, the philosophical cockroach who was once a poet, and Mehitabel, a streetwise alley cat who was once Cleopatra. Reincarnated as the lowest creatures on the social scale, they prowl the rowdy streets of New York City in between the world wars. The antics of these two immortal characters are now made available for the first time in their original order of publication in this unique, comprehensive collection, which features many poems never before reprinted. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust theseries to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-datetranslations by award-winning translators.

Table of Contents:
The Annotated Archy and MehitabelIntroduction by Michael Sims Suggestions for Further Reading A Note on the Text The Annotated Archy and Mehitabel 1916 Expression Is the Need Just Cockroaches Something to Say Simplified Spelling Hell Freddy Is No More Up or Down the Scale Raise in Salary An Easy Mark Grind Down the Laboring Man Just for This, You Go in Agate, Archy Desk All Cleaned Up Capitals Why Not Commit Suicide Writing All By Itself We Rushed Forward and Swatted My Naked Soul On My Recent Demise Ballade of the Under Side Aeroplane Back to the Starting Point Lightning Bug The Next Line Be Beautiful Cleopatra The Queens I Have Been Unpunctuated Gink Butting These Keys with My Head Drunken Hornet Cheer Up Cheer Up White Powder My Ultimatum Swiss Cheese Katydid Suicide Club, Part 1 Suicide Club, Part 2 Suicide Club, Part 3 Suicide Club, Part 4 Suicide Club, Part 5 Killing Off the Sparrows My Last Name Where Is Archy? Arrest That Statue Happy Inspirations 1917 That Cockroach Glide Archy Gets His Statue Made Statue of Myself Going to War of Just Going to Hell More or Less Neutral Between Him and His Masterpiece War Times Agate for You, Archy, Just to Curb Your Pride The Story of Mehitabel the Cat A Pampered Kitten Mehitabel the Cat Has Struck It Was Beer A Saucer Full of Beer The Cat Is Sore at Me Comma Boss Comma Lawn Workman Spare That Bathtub Washington D C Archy in Washington To Help Win the War Out of the Cockroach Body A German Periscope Patience Worth Beware the Demon Rum Sounds Like a Jolly Gang Interest in Science He Cried into His Beer Prudence Too Romantic to Work I Knew a Ghost That Ghost That Loafs Superior Sad Looking Ghost Bore His Way Out 1918 Literary Slave No Longer Poetry Is Window Box War Gardens The Crippled Cockroach We Suspect Archy Cockroachism Named after the Washington Arch Aeroplane Mail Assisting at a Suicide Not a Fish At the Zoo Prohibition Rushes Toward Us Income Tax Slacker The Raiding Habit A Loyal Allied Cootie Dialogue among the Plants Ye Instead of The One Thing That Makes Crickets So Melancholy Sphinx Reports of My Exit Glorious Footfulness Falling Upwards Headgear Smile When You Ride on the Subway A Genuine Quip Tobacco Fund The Advice of Your Little Friend Jane Gad Fly The Influenza A Tall Story Chief Janitor I Saw Archy Peace Conference More and More at Sea Poet Overboard Freedom of the Seas Two Old Men Passing the Bock The Former Kaiser Abdication Underneath the Bough Who Pays for All This The Former Czar 1919 At the Tomb of Napoleon Preliminary Peace No Water Bug Safer in America An Interview with Mehitabel No Beer No Work Royal Blood and Anarchy I Left There Too Soon Classed with Fleas A Home among the Casks Help I Can Give the Worried Housewife In Spite of H Dash Double L Galoshes for Cockroaches A Poem in the Kipling Manner Put Me in the Movies The Best Thing You Have Done Yet Archy Is Still on Strike Grin and Beer It The Archy Strike Call Archy Back An Injunction Archy Gets a 50 Per Cent Increase Thank You for the Advice Darned Little Justice Archy Gets Restless Again A Plum Plan Trying to Ruin Me To Settle the Controversy Rheumatism This Monster Man The Cat Show 1920 Archy Is Ill The Anti Cockroach Conspiracy A Threat The Shimmie A Former Doughboy Pretty Soft for You A Little Waterbug An Archy Drive Sentimental about Birds A Sad Time Dieting Crazy as a Bed Bug Random Thoughts by Archy I Saw a Football Game 1921 No Privacy This Lenin Person Organizing the Insects The Cockroach Its Life History My Private Comet Dodo Birds and Cubist Posters To Become Grasshoppers Ku Klux Klam O City of Angels Archy Turns Highbrow for a Minute Krew Krux Kranks Cursed Fly Swatters 1922 The Cheerful Oyster Talking to a Moth Ground for Optimism Waiting for a Vacant Body Interviewed the Mummy Archy to the Radio Fans Once Every Seventeen Years The Truth about the Insects Warty Bliggens Strange Bedfellows My Favorite Poem Always the Lady Archy's Own Short Course in Entomology The Patagonian Penguin Be Glad You're Not a Tomcat The Most Luckless Creature Low Brow Song of Mehitabel Forgets His Littleness Business Matters Fairies I Knuckle Under The Dactyl Droops Investigating Her Morals Small Talk Shakespeare and I Thank You for the Mittens Archy Is Excited The Futility of Literature Notes Acknowledgments